Baby
by Catslynw
Summary: He dropped the knife and stumbled backward as the woman who’d been leaning against the door literally fell into his arms. The extremely naked, extremely hot young woman. 5am. Illinois. November. Naked. Crap. Dean!danger, Impala!danger, overprotective!Sam
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: This story is set immediately following the events of episode 3-7, __Fresh Blood__._

* * *

**Chapter 1**

Dean's hand slid under the threadbare fabric of the pillow, fingers curling reflexively around the grip of his bowie. Lifting his head from the pillow, he squinted at Sam's bed. Empty. Neatly made and empty. It was 5:13 in the freakin' morning and Sam was already up and bouncing around somewhere. Dean groaned. His brother was probably sitting in a wifi coffee shop, a book propped open on his lap, his battered laptop gradually overheating while his latte went cold. God, he could be such a girl.

So, if Sam was off on soul-saving detail at this ungodly hour of the morning, then what –

He heard it again. Someone was knocking on the motel room door. At least he hoped it was a _someone_ because it was way the Hell too early for a _something._ It was also too damn early for the cleaning lady. And if Sam had locked himself out, he'd just pick the lock. At least he would if he knew what was good for him. Five in the freakin' morning! Tightening his grip on the bowie, Dean rolled out of bed and padded over to the door. No peephole, naturally. That would be considered an expensive extra in Low-Rent Lodge Land. Moving to the window near the door, Dean drew the curtain back a crack, but he could see nothing. Whoever was out there was either right up against the door or had already left. Scrubbing the sleep off his face with his free hand, he walked back around the partition that separated the foyer from the sleeping area and headed for the duffel by his bed. No way was he going outside to investigate in the middle of November in Illinois in a pair of boxer shorts and a Metallica t-shirt. The one decent thing about this rat trap was the heat, warm enough you could actually sleep comfortably without wrapping yourself up like a mummy. Dropping the bowie on the bed, Dean snatched a pair of jeans out of the duffle and skinnied into them. He was reaching for his boots when the knock came again.

All right. That was it. No way was anything supernatural actually going to knock three times and wait politely for someone to answer the door. No Sam, no monsters, no cleaning staff. That left religious wackos who wanted him to convert as the next most likely candidates. At 5 a.m. Teeth bared and knife brandished, Dean yanked the door open.

"What?!"

He dropped the knife and stumbled backward as the woman who'd been leaning against the door literally fell into his arms. The extremely naked, extremely hot young woman. Scrambling for balance, Dean's bare feet slipped off the raised floor of the foyer, and he landed on his ass by the beds with Naked Girl smack on top of him.

He tried to say something, but most of her weight seemed to be centered on the elbow pressing into his diaphragm. His head ached from the collision with the floor, and the wound on his neck had awoken with a vengeance. Sucking in a breath, Dean waited for the screaming to start. The screaming, the hitting and the general panic that could usually be expected of a naked girl confronted by a strange man. The girl just wormed her hands beneath the hem of his shirt and hung on. The tips of her fingers were like ice cubes against the skin of his back.

5 a.m. Illinois. November. Naked.

Crap.

Dean wrapped his arms around the girl as she shivered against him. She let out small sigh and burrowed in further, curling against him like a particularly affectionate cat.

"What in the Hell? Dean?"

Dean lifted his head, and looked along the naked length of the girl's body – she had a nice, round little ass – and then up at the still open door. Sam stood there, his geek-bag slung bandolier-style across his chest, coffee carrier in one hand, keys in the other and eyebrows climbing for the heavens.

"Well, don't just stand there, college boy! Shut the damn door and hand me a blanket!"

"What happened?" Sam demanded. "She's shaking like a leaf."

Dean rolled his eyes. "She's not scared, Sam. She's freezing. She's got goosebumps on her goosebumps." He shifted uncomfortably as evidence of the cold pressed against him in entertaining places. "Now hand me a damn blanket, would ya?"

In true girl fashion, Sam kicked the door closed behind him, but then stopped long enough to set the coffee carefully down on the table by the window before pulling one of the covers off Dean's bed and hastily draping it over the trembling girl.

"Thanks." Warm breath tickled his skin, sending shivers down his spine. The word was spoken so quietly, and so directly into his collarbone that Dean wasn't certain he'd actually heard it until Sam mumbled an embarrassed sounding, "You're welcome."

Holding the blanket in place with one arm, Dean levered himself and the girl up off the floor. Sam squatted beside them and quickly helped transfer her from Dean's lap to Dean's bed. Yeah, that was a better. Instead of a strange naked girl in his arms, he had a strange naked girl in his bed. Well, actually, that was kind of normal. Scrambling to his feet, Dean looked her blanket-clad form up and down, from her unpainted toenails to the glossy black hair that brushed the tops of her pale…

Clearing his throat, Dean leaned forward and pulled the blanket a little higher up her body. He rolled his eyes in Sammy's direction, but giant boy only had eyes for Naked Girl. The girl was smiling up at both of them, her dark eyes wide and so calm he wondered if she'd been tranked. There was something strangely familiar about that smile.

"Who are you?" Sam asked, and despite his gentle tone, Dean could see that his hand was hovering at his hip, ready to go for the pistol he carried at the small of his back. And when precisely had Sam started going around armed all the time? That was freakin' new.

* * *

The girl tilted her head at Sam looking puzzled and he tried again. "What's your name?"

Her smile reappeared. "Sweetheart."

Her voice was a deep alto, and a jolt seemed to go through Dean at the sound of it. Sam watched him in his peripheral vision, but he kept his eyes fixed firmly on the girl, his fingers wrapping around the grip of his gun. No ordinary human would be this calm naked and alone with two strange men. Sam's jaw clenched as he contemplated the alternatives. Dean still had six months left on his deal. What if the demons had decided to try and collect early? God knows a hot, naked chick had a better shot at getting close to Sam's brother than a balding, pot-bellied trucker did.

Even as Sam prepared to draw his pistol, Dean flashed one his most flirtatious grins at the girl and sat down beside her on the bed. "You are that, honey," he drawled. "But sweetheart's not a name. What do people really call you?"

She blinked wide, dark eyes at him, the lashes brushing her cheeks as her smile widened. "They do call me sweetheart," she insisted. She leaned into Dean, raising her face to his and staring into his eyes.

Dean swallowed visibly and leaned away ever so slightly, his smile suddenly looking forced. The gaze he rolled in Sam's direction was more than mildly disturbed. When he started to rise from the bed, however, the girl reached out of the folds of the blanket and seized him by the arm. Disturbed turned to panicked faster than Sam could blink. But instead of lashing out, his brother froze in place, crouched halfway between sitting and standing.

"I never realized just how bright your eyes are," the girl said, her gaze still fixed on Dean's face, her eyes crinkling until she looked almost near-sighted.

Sam could feel his own eyes narrowing as Dean's terror grew, his brother's mouth moving soundlessly. Stepping hurriedly forward, he grabbed the girl by the arm and yanked her around to face him, the barrel of his PT-99 pointed directly between her eyes. The blanket fell to the floor where it puddled around her ankles. "Who are you, really?"

Dean shook himself and then laid an admonitory hand on Sam's arm. "Whoa, Sam, what's with the rough stuff?" he asked, sounding almost like himself. "She's just some chick."

"The Hell she is," Sam snapped. "Christo!"

The girl looked up at him, perplexed, but completely unfazed and unresisting despite her nudity and his bruising grip on her forearm. "Huh?" she asked.

Sam ground his teeth. "Dean, get the holy water out of my bag."

Dean shook his head, his alarm having transferred itself from the girl to his brother as far as Sam could tell. "Dude, put the gun away before you do something monumentally stupid. She's just some chick!"

"Tell me your name! Your real name!" he demanded.

"I told you," she insisted, turning an imploring gaze on Dean. "It's sweetheart."

"Sweetheart," Dean repeated in his patented _everything is going to be fine, please ignore the Neanderthal with the gun,_ tone. "Right. But what else do they call you?"

The girl's face underwent a rapid transformation, like the sun coming out on a winter morning. "Well, sometimes you call me Baby," she suggested helpfully. "I like that."

"Baby, huh?" Dean repeated, his mouth quirking up on one side. "Like that hot, geeky chick in Dirty Dancing. The one who – wait!" His hand tightened reflexively on Sam's arm. "_I call?_ I call you Baby?"

"Yes."

"Okey Dokey," Dean said, turning to face Sam. His eyebrows did a quick little dance in the direction of the door. "Could I talk to you – outside?"

Sam clenched his jaw, biting back the smart-ass comebacks that sprang instantly to mind. "You want to leave her alone in here?"

"Dude, she's unarmed." Dean rolled his eyes. "Not to mention naked, so could we just – "

"Fine," Sam snapped. "Just… fine."

Sam waited for Dean to go past him and then backed toward the door, never once losing his target lock on "Baby." Not looking where he was going, he succeeded in nearly running Dean over, bumping into him and pinning his brother between him and the still-closed door. Dean growled, "Personal space, Sasquatch!" Then his brother shoved him aside, jerked the door open and stepped through.

Sam could feel the muscle in his jaw jumping in time with his heart as the girl watched Dean's antics with the tolerant, affectionate expression of an elderly aunt. "Don't touch anything," he ordered, punctuating each word with a little shake of the gun. She nodded earnestly, making more than her chin bobble. "And put the blanket back on."

"Okay, Sam." Her smile never wavered.

Sam was reaching behind him for the edge of the door when Dean's hand wrapped itself in the back of his jacket and pulled. Sam stumbled out into the parking lot, nearly losing his balance when Dean turned the yank into a less than gentle shove. The door slammed shut behind them as he righted himself.

"Dean! What the hell?"

"Put the gun away before someone sees it, Sammy."

When Sam didn't move quite fast enough to suit him, Dean took the gun out of his hand, checked the safety, pulled open the waistband of Sam's jeans and shoved the gun back in. The muzzle snagged on his undershorts, the elastic pulling on him in uncomfortable places. "Snap out of it, will ya?"

"Dean, who is she?"

"Duh! I don't know. If I knew, we wouldn't be freezing our asses off in the parking lot right now. Whoever she is, she's whole bucketloads of crazy." Dean hopped from foot to foot. Looking down, Sam realized that his brother had on neither shoes nor socks. A t-shirt and his folded arms were the only things between his brother's torso and the cold. Sam frowned and shrugged off his jacket, then stepped closer to wrap it around Dean.

Dean batted at him and backed away. "I am not your prom date, Sammy! Knock it off."

Sam closed his eyes and counted to three slowly. With Dean, he rarely had time to count to five, let alone ten. Three had to do. "Just put it on, Dean."

"No. You put it on. It's your damn coat."

One. Two. Three. "Yes, but you're the one who's suffering the aftereffects of severe blood loss, and it's freezing out here. Put it on."

Dean reached up and rubbed self-consciously at the bandage covering the bite mark on the right side of his throat. If it was hurting, though, Dean wasn't telling. Typical. "Look, can we talk about what we came out here to talk about?" he demanded irritably. "Like why there's a naked girl in our room?"

"Dean, I am not standing here and talking about anything with you going into shock right in front of me," Sam snapped. "Besides, there are always naked girls hanging around our motel room. That seems to be how you like them."

Dean's spine straightened so fast that Sam would have sworn he could hear the vertebrae popping. "Excuse me, but I'm pretty sure that I just told you that I don't know who the in the Hell she is!"

"Are you sure?" Sam challenged, trying once more to drape the jacket around his brother's shivering shoulders. "Come on, Dean. We've been here a couple days, and you got pretty wasted at that biker bar yesterday. On just two beers."

"Okay, so Gordie took a Big Gulp. So what? Drunk or not, there is no way I would forget that I brought some chick back to the motel with me. And even if I did forget, which I didn't, where's she been hiding for the last 12 hours? Huh? Answer me that."

"I don't know. I just… Dean, she's naked and ever since Wyoming you have been kind of – "

Dean went still, so still that Sam was finally able to get the jacket securely fixed around his shoulders. "What, Sam? I've been kind of what?"

"Amorous."

Dean tilted his head like he couldn't possibly have heard Sam correctly. "Come again?"

"Amorous. You've been… amorous."

"Horny? Are you saying I'm horny?" Dean demanded, his eye widening until cold generated tears spilled over his pale cheeks.

"Dean, you're always horny. Lately, it's just worse."

"Horny?"

"Yes."

"Worse?"

"Dude! Would you stop repeating everything I say? Horny. Naked chick. These two things go together. Why can't you just admit that – " Sam cut off as Dean stepped into his personal space… and how someone who was so much shorter than him could be so intimidating, Sam would never know.

"So you think that I'm so desperate to get laid that I just sleep-walked to the nearest bar while you were out getting coffee, picked up a girl, brought her back to our room, had sex and then forgot about it – once again, all while you were out getting coffee."

"Yes, no, I don't know," Sam backpedaled furiously. A severely pissed off Dean would not help this situation, but a Dean in denial was, quite literally, killing both of them. "It's just, sometimes, it seems like getting laid is all you care about anymore. You care more about that than about the fact that you're dying. You care more about having fun than about the fact that you're going to Hell! I don't – " Sam stopped speaking as Dean's jaw shut with an audible snap.

As they'd talked, Dean's hands had crept out from under his armpits to close on the edges of Sam's jacket, pulling it more tightly around him. Now, the hands clamped shut on the fabric were white knuckled despite the stinging wind. Sam lifted his gaze from Dean's hands to his face and found a sharp coldness there as well. For a long moment, neither of them spoke, just staring at each other.

In the end, it was Dean who broke the silence, his words clipped and icy. "I _don't_ know who she is. I _don't_ know where she came from. And I _don't_ think she's dangerous. I _do_ think that she probably needs our help, and I _do _know that I am not having this conversation with you – again – in the middle of a parking lot while a naked stranger is wandering around our hotel room."

Sam nodded. "Okay. Okay, Dean."

"I'm going to go find our guest something to put on, so I'll need more clothes. Get the rest of our bags out of the car and bring them inside."

"Sure, Dean."

Shooting Sam once last scathing look, Dean turned and marched back to their hotel room, slamming the door behind him so loudly that the units next to them simply had to be empty or the neighbors would have been screaming bloody murder. Stymied, sighing and shivering, Sam dug his copies of the Impala's keys out of his pocket and a made a beeline for the trunk.

It was green, and far, far too small.

Sam stopped, puzzled. There was a beat up old Volkswagen Bug with rust all over its rear bumper in the spot where the Impala should have been. He turned a slow half-circle, scanning the parking lot. Dean must have moved the car while he was out getting coffee, but, try as he might, he couldn't spot Dean's baby anywhere. Two decade old Hondas, an old Lincoln and one of those Ford Festivas that Dean thought looked like a pregnant roller skate. No Chevy of any kind. A chill settling in his stomach, Sam walked back around the dumpster enclosure, opened their hotel room door an stuck his head in.

"Uh, Dean," he began hesitantly, "hey, uh, where did you park the car?"

Dean was digging through the small supply of clothes in his go-bag while the girl looked on curiously. He did not turn around, the tense lines of his shoulders screaming _offended dignity._ "It's on the other side of the dumpster, genius." Dean pulled a faded Led Zeppelin tee out of his bag and tossed it at the girl without looking. "Here you go, sweetheart." It landed beside her on the bed, but the girl made no move to pick it up, only her eyes tracking its flight and fall.

"Dean, the car – "

"I told you already, it's by the dumpster!" Dean

Sam swallowed, gaze fixed on the empty air above Dean's head. Oh, crap. "Well, actually, it's not."

His brother whirled around so fast that his amulet flew up and hit him on the cheek. "That's not funny, Sam!" The look Dean fixed him with had been known to give burly bikers second thoughts about messing with his big brother…and sometimes third and fourth thoughts as well. Sam just smiled sheepishly and shrugged. Then, his sense of self-preservation quite well developed after more than ten years of active hunting, he got out of the way. And just in time too. Dean raced out of the hotel room like it was burning down around his ears – okay, not the best choice of visuals there, Sam – and came to a dead halt next to the decrepit VW.

"My car! Where's my – " He spun around to face Sam. "What'd you do with my car?!"

"Me? I didn't do anything."

"Then what… " Dean trailed off looking stricken. "Someone stole my car," he whispered. "Someone stole my car! Someone _stole_ my _car_!" Every repetition got louder and more frantic, and a deep crimson climbed up Dean's throat and into his already cold-pinkened cheeks. Sam wasn't even surprised when Dean scrambled at the latch on the dumpster enclosure and squeezed through the gates the instant they cracked open.

"Dean, seriously, like the car would fit in there." The car was missing. It wasn't – quite – a disaster. After dying and then having his brother sell his soul to bring him back, Sam had a whole new perspective on words like disaster, fiasco and miracle. The situation was serious, admittedly. After all, most of their belonging were in that car. All they'd taken into the motel room had been their go-bags. The vast majority of their clothing, weapons, and supplies were now probably in the hands of petty criminals. Thrilling. Maybe the jerks could get some use out of their fake I.D.s. Sam hated the thought of putting more weapons into the hands of your typical, anti-social street scum. Then there was the small matter of what could happen if the cops busted said petty criminals and found Sam and Dean's stash of fake I.D.s, especially since Dean was pretty darn high up on the F.B.I.'s most wanted list. Hendrickson on their ass was the last thing they needed right now. And yet, despite all those problems, this still didn't qualify as a disaster in Sam's book.

Dean was a whole other story. This was definitely a disaster to his big brother. A fact that would have been hard to miss with a still-shoeless Dean actually looking in trash cans and underneath the other cars in the parking lot. Crap. The early morning wind had a damp bite to it. Sam was shivering and Dean had left Sam's coat in their room, so he had to be even colder. Jogging to his side, Sam took Dean by the arm and turned him back toward their room. "Dean, man, come on. You're going to draw attention to us. We can't afford for the cops to – " They'd gone maybe ten feet when Dean dug in his heels and refused to be moved any further.

"Sam! Where. Is. My. Car! Where's my baby!!!"

"We'll find – "

"I'm right here." The soft voice startled them both. Sam turned to find the girl standing behind them, her bare feet peeking out from beneath the blanket that hung loosely from her shoulders. Her eyes were wide and dark, the hair that cascaded over her pale shoulders as black and shining as the newly restored Impala. "I wouldn't ditch you, Dean. I would never do that. Never."

Sam's hand tightened on Dean's arm as Dean's jaw worked soundlessly for a moment. Down. Up. Down. All the color drained from his face, and Sam was eerily reminded of the way his brother had looked that terrible night in Wyoming, when he'd finally confessed to selling his soul. Then, without so much as a whimper, Dean crumpled like an empty duffle bag. Sam's stomach turned to ice as Dean dangled limply from his grasp, the sudden weight doubling Sam over. He found himself on his knees, his brother sprawled in an ungainly, shivering heap beside him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Baby dropped down next to them, the blanket falling off her shoulders yet again. "He's cold," she said, sounding oddly startled. Twisting around, she grabbed the blanket and began to tuck it around Dean. Sam didn't even try to argue. Nudging her aside with his shoulder, he lifted Dean into his arms, blanket and all. He stood, grunting as the weight of Dean's heavily muscled body made his knees creak ominously. This always looked so easy in the movies. Of course, in the movies he'd be carrying a beautiful woman off into the sunset, not lugging his twenty-eight-year-old brother around like a sack of… rock salt.

Sam made his way to their room as quickly as he could, Baby holding onto the edge of the blanket with one hand and coming within a hair's breadth of tripping him with every other step.

"Son of a bitch!" As curses went, even Dean could not have imbued this one with more heartfelt frustration. The door had swung closed behind them. Sam was contemplating how he was going to get his key out of his pocket without putting Dean down, and preferably before someone noticed the naked woman dogging his steps, when he had a sudden, vivid memory of his key sitting on the formica table right next to the coffee carrier. Hitching Dean a little higher up in his arms, Sam leaned against the door jamb, using it to help support his brother's considerable weight. "Son of a bitch," he repeated, rolling his eyes skyward. Naked girls, stubborn brothers, stolen cars and crappy motels… enough was enough already!

"What's wrong, Sam?" Baby asked, gently placing a hand on Sam's arm. She stood very close to them, her other hand maintaining its hold on Dean. But then, she was probably desperate for the shared body warmth. The icy wind was beginning to make Sam's cheeks feel numb and he was fully dressed. God only knew what that same wind was doing to her bare skin. Why wasn't she complaining? Why hadn't she demanded the blanket back at the very least? _Why_ did she claim to be the _Impala_? The whole situation was bizarre and rapidly closing in on the Crazy Town city limit sign.

"The door is locked," he admitted grudgingly, dropping his chin to his chest. There was an itch starting on the tip of his nose.

"Oh," she replied softly. Then, after a moment, "Don't you have a key?"

Sam did not raise his voice no matter how much he wanted to. They couldn't afford the attention. "It's inside. On the table."

"Does Dean have a key?"

Still no yelling, damn it. "It's inside. On the nightstand."

Her brows crinkled ever so slightly. "What's a nightstand?"

Sam's chin snapped up. "What's a – are you serious? How can you not – " Sam broke off in mid-expostulation as his brother started shivering more violently. When a sudden twitch nearly caused him to drop Dean, Sam hastily knelt down on the threshold. He laid Dean up against the wall, trying to keep him out of the wind as much as possible. Before he could lower Dean's head to the cement, however, Baby was there, sitting bare-bottomed on the cold ground and taking Dean's head into her lap. She stroked his hair, looking up at Sam with anxious, doe-like eyes.

"Is he going to be all right?"

"He'll be fine," Sam replied, not certain who he was really trying to reassure, the potential demon or himself. Trying not to think too hard about which portion of her anatomy Dean's nose was almost touching, Sam turned back to the door and rapidly evaluated the lock. Huh. He wouldn't even need his lock picks for this. Darn good thing too, since they were currently in his go-bag and his go-bag was inside the locked room. Digging out a credit card purporting to belong to one Jacob Steinman, Sam made quick work of jimmying the piece-of-crap door open. They really needed to start staying in more upscale places. Someplace this easy to break into just wasn't safe, and he had to keep Dean safe. He had to.

The moment the door swung inward on its hinges, Sam scooped Dean up and sidled through. The sudden blast of warm air set off a volley of sneezes, and he stumbled forward and dropped Dean unceremoniously onto the nearest bed. He was blinking the tears out of his eyes when he saw Baby dash through the still open door and climb onto the bed beside Dean. His brother shivered and pulled away when her nose touched the bare skin of his neck, but that probably had more to do with the frigid temperature of her skin than anything else.

Cursing under his breath, Sam dragged all the blankets off of his bed and then plopped them down on top of them both. Then, more satisfyingly, he vented a little of his spleen on the hapless door and kicked the damned thing closed. He didn't need this crap. He really didn't.

It was the work of mere moments to fetch the first aid kit from the bathroom. Dean was stirring when he returned, his eyes flicking behind their lids. Sam shook him by the shoulder, trying to jar him all the way back to consciousness. "Dean. Come on, Dean. Open your eyes. I need you to open your eyes." When his brother's eyes remained closed, Sam reluctantly called upon his best John Winchester. Deepening his voice he barked, "Wake up, Dean!"

Dean jerked suddenly forward, struggling to hold himself upright on trembling arms. His bloodshot eyes looked terrible against the icy paleness of his skin, but they were open and that was what mattered. His pupils were even, and after a moment his eyes tracked to Sam's face in puzzlement. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Sam held Dean steady with one arm while he bunched the pillows up behind him with the other. Then he eased him back down until he was reclining against the pillows.

"What happened?" Dean demanded, still shivering despite the blankets, the heated hotel room and the warmth of the naked woman curled up beside him. She appeared to have fallen asleep, though part of Sam couldn't help wondering if it was all still part of some murky and convoluted act.

Dean's eyes widened when he noticed the girl beside him, and he turned a curious look on Sam. Only his exhaustion seemed to stop curious from turning into panicked once again. Sam shrugged and, taking hold of Dean's chin, turned his head away to get a better look at the rapidly reddening bandage on Dean's neck. It was so saturated with blood, that skinny red trails had begun winding their way down Dean's neck and soaking into the edge of his t-shirt. Damn it. Damn it. "Damn it! Why won't this stop bleeding? Dean, have you been picking at –"

"Anticoagulant."

Sam and Dean turned in unison to stare at the top of Baby's head. She was all but invisible, buried beneath layers of blankets, with one of Dean's arms draped lightly around her back. "What did you say?" Sam demanded.

"Anticoagulant. Vampires release an anticoagulant when they feed," she murmured sleepily. Looking more than a bit mesmerized, Dean raised his hand from her back to her hair, running his fingers idly through the glossy black strands. She made a sound suspiciously like a purr and nestled even more snugly up against his side.

Anticoagulant? Could that be true? And even if it was, how could she possibly know unless she was a hunter herself? Sam wouldn't even consider the possibility that she could actually be the Impala. That was crazy. It was beyond crazy. It was… Dean was still bleeding. Popping open the first aid kit, Sam pulled everything he would need to reseal the wound. Cursing silently to himself, he peeled off the old bandage, dropping it onto the floor between the beds and rapidly replacing it with a triple thick set of sterile pads. Then, once the bleeding had slowed enough that he could stop worrying about his brother bleeding out right in front of him, Sam pulled the pads away and carefully cleaned and disinfected the bite. Then he smeared on an extra thick layer of antibiotic cream and redressed the wound with another triple thick set of sterile pads and taped it in place. Dean was remarkably compliant throughout the procedure, and Sam abruptly realized that both his brother and the girl were asleep again.

Damn Gordon, Sam thought, careful to keep the anger off his face in case Dean wasn't as deeply asleep as he seemed. Dean didn't react well to Sam getting emotional these days, and Dean was already so infuriated with Gordon that he didn't need Sam's anxiety ramping up his own. Especially now. God, especially now. Sam cleaned up the mess and cranked the heat up an extra notch. Then, jaw set, he walked over and quietly shook the girl awake.


	3. Chapter 3

Damn Gordon, Sam thought, careful to keep the anger off his face in case Dean wasn't as deeply asleep as he seemed. Dean didn't react well to Sam getting emotional these days, and Dean was already so infuriated with Gordon that he didn't need Sam's anxiety ramping up his own. Especially now. God, especially now. Sam cleaned up the mess and cranked the heat up an extra notch. Then, jaw set, he walked over and quietly shook the girl awake.

She stretched like a cat and smiled contentedly up at him. "Hi, Sam."

"Hi," he said automatically, his lips starting to twitch into a smile of their own despite his growing annoyance with the whole damned situation. Shaking his head at the ridiculousness of the response, he said, "We need to talk."

"Okay." She sat up, the blanket falling to her waist and once more baring everything there was to bare. "What do you want to talk about?"

Gritting his teeth, Sam reached for the Led Zeppelin t-shirt dangling off the edge of his bed and handed it to her. "Put this on," he said softly. "And try not to wake Dean."

She nodded, gave him another beatific smile and then slipped her legs out from under the covers and stood by the side of the bed. This girl really had no sense of modesty whatsoever. Either that or being completely naked was just completely normal for her. Nudist maybe? Sam contemplated the options as he dug in his and Dean's go-bags for something remotely plausible for her to wear on the bottom. He settled on a pair of his sweats. They were longer than Dean's, which made them way, way too long for Baby, but they were also a little narrower in the waist and had a nice tight drawstring. When he turned back to hand them to her, he found the girl with her head stuck partially through one of the t-shirts armholes and her arms tangled in the remains of the shirt. She was turning in slow circles, like a cat chasing its own tail as she tried, without notable success, to disentangle herself. Sam had to give her one thing though. She was being quiet, as requested. Oh brother.

"Here, let me," Sam said in disgusted tones. He dropped the sweats at her feet. Then, grabbing ahold of one of her arms at the elbow, he managed to pull it free from the shirt and yanked the whole thing off over her head. She yelped and wobbled in place for a second, but she didn't complain at the relatively rough treatment. Instead she just blew at the hair that had fallen into her face, brushed tentatively at it and then frowned when it fell right back into eyes. She stared at the locks, cross-eyed and Sam groaned. If this innocent act _was_ an act, it was a darn good one… which just made her all the more dangerous. "Put your arms up and hold still," Sam ordered. Baby did as he'd asked, and Sam carefully worked her hands into the sleeves of the t-shirt and then pulled the whole thing down over head. He didn't stop until the hem of the shirt was, thankfully, past her hips. He bent down to retrieve the sweats and when he stood back up he found her running her hands curiously down the from the shirt.

"It's soft," she said, smiling up at Sam through the curtain of hair that had fallen into her face.

"Uh, yeah. I guess." Sam held out the sweats. "Here, put these on."

Baby took them by one pant leg and looked at them in clear puzzlement. "How?"

"How?"

"That's what I said," Baby retorted. "How do I put them on? And why is it _them_? There only seems to be one piece of clothing."

"Actually," Sam replied, taking the sweats back and kneeling down in front of her again, "I think the plural pronoun is a holdover from the days when pants always used to be two pieces." Sam scrunched the sweats up on the sides so that Baby could just step into them. "Put your foot through here," he directed. Then he had her do the same with the other foot. "Now pull that part up to your waist and hold it there for a minute." Baby complied, hiking the waist all the way up to her breasts, and Sam started rolling up the cuffs. There was a good twelve-to-fifteen inches of extra fabric bunched up around her ankles and dragging on the floor. "You see the legs of pants weren't actually attached to each other back when people first started wearing them. Instead, they attached to a belt that you wore around your waist, and – "

"Dean was right," Baby said with a laugh. "You know an awful lot about very odd things. I can't imagine knowing so much." She brushed the hair out of her face again, this time succeeding in making it stay behind her ears for the moment.

Sam felt an unexpected surge of irritation with her, with his brother and with everyone who had ever made a crack about him being the _smart one_ in the family. People knew stuff. Ordinary people knew stuff. He wasn't that strange, he was just surrounded by people who only cared about very limited fields of knowledge. Even the Impala thought that he s– damn it! He was not talking to the car. He was _not_. It was just crazy. Lips pursed in annoyance, Sam stood up and started rolling down the waist band of the sweats after first pulling the draw string as tight as it would go. A pair of thick winter socks completed the outfit. By the time Sam was finished, Baby was covered, albeit lumpily, and he was fed up with his own racing thoughts, doubts, suppositions and general lack of meaningful information. Why did life have to be so complicated?

Sam scowled, pointed meaningfully at a chair, and Baby hastily sat down in it. He pulled the other chair around the table so that he was sitting directly in front of her, their knees touching. She wouldn't be able to leave her chair unless he moved or she literally climbed over him. He was highly aware of the weight of his gun against the small of his back and even more aware of Dean's solid presence behind him in the room. His brother was snoring lightly, a fact which Sam found both reassuring and vaguely irritating. That he also found that irritation reassuring was an emotion too complex and bizarre to examine at length. God, he wanted a simpler life. A life without Hell, demons, ghosts, contracts or magically transforming cars.

"So, how did you know about the anticoagulant?" Sam demanded.

"I heard John and Daniel talking about it," Baby answered without hesitation.

"You mean Daniel Elkins?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. It was years and years ago, back when you could still stretch out on the backseat."

"You heard them talking?"

"Um hm. John was driving, and Daniel was flipping through that book of his. He told your father that he thought vampires had an anticoagulant in their saliva. John said he was nuts and that vampires were extinct anyway so it didn't really matter."

"They're not extinct," Sam corrected automatically.

"Oh, I know that now, but John was very sure back then."

Sam frowned thoughtfully. "It doesn't make sense though. Vampires sometimes keep victims alive for days or even weeks, feeding on them slowly. An anticoagulant would make that impossible."

"That's what your father said, too. But Daniel said that he thinks they can control it. I don't really know how it works, just what they said." She shrugged then leaned sideways and gazed past Sam at Dean's sleeping form. "He is going to be okay, isn't he?"

"He's going to fine. I told you."

"I know, Sam. It's just… I've been so worried about him ever since you died." Her eyes filled with tears. "It was so awful. You were so cold and still and Dean just cried and cried and cried."


	4. Chapter 4

*Note: Due to some editing and additions, I have reposted a small portion of the end of the previous scene. What follows after is entirely new.

"You heard them talking?"

"Um hm. John was driving, and Daniel was flipping through that book of his. He told your father that he thought vampires had an anticoagulant in their saliva. John said he was nuts and that vampires were extinct anyway, so it didn't really matter."

"They're not extinct," Sam corrected automatically.

"Oh, I know that now, but John was very sure back then."

Sam frowned thoughtfully. "It doesn't make sense though. Vampires sometimes keep victims alive for days or even weeks, feeding on them slowly. An anticoagulant would make that impossible."

"That's what your father said, too. But Daniel said that he thinks they can control it. I don't really know how it works, just what they said."

If that was true, if the vampires could control the bleeding of their victims, that meant that Gordon had had every intention of sucking Dean dry before moving on to killing Sam. The fiery rage in his gut burned hotter the longer he thought about it, and he wanted nothing more than to go find Gordon and kill the bastard again. But he had to pull himself together. After all, Dean still needed caring for and Baby was still sitting there, watching him intently. He swallowed against the anger tightening his throat. "What else do you know about vampire bites? Anything that might help?"

Baby shrugged then leaned sideways and gazed past Sam at Dean's sleeping form. "He is going to be okay, isn't he?"

"He's going to fine. I told you."

"I know, Sam. It's just… I've been so worried about him ever since you died." Her eyes filled with tears. "It was so awful. You were so cold and still and Dean just cried and cried and cried."

Sam leaned away, taken aback by her tears and her words. How could she know all that? How could she know _any_ of that unless she really was who she claimed to be? Or unless she was a demon who'd been working with Azazel. He just kept cycling back around to that. She knew too much to just be a crazy woman, and a run of the mill monster wouldn't be able to pull something like this off. So, no matter how you looked at it, she was either exactly what she claimed or she was a demon. The problem was deciding which to believe. Sam knew which he would prefer. A car transformed into woman was way the hell too much trouble to even contemplate. A demon he could kill. One bullet from the Colt and – holy crap! The Colt was in the trunk of the Impala. The Impala was missing. This woman was the only one who could possibly know where it was.

Swiftly running down a checklist of signs of demonic possession in his head, Sam leaned forward and said, "Christo," in a firm clear voice.

Baby sniffled, looking startled. "Why do you keep saying that? I'm not a demon. At least, I don't see how I could be."

Sam blinked at her for a moment, then, pursing his lips he got up and fetched a flask of holy water from his go-bag. "Here," he said, unscrewing the lid of the flask and shoving it at her. "Drink this."

"What is it?" she asked. She leaned forward and peered at the open flask, then she pulled back abruptly, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "Ewww. What is that?"

"Whiskey, apparently." Sam silently cursed his sleeping brother as he returned to the go-bag and dug for another flask. Dean really needed to stop filling all of Sam's flasks with whiskey. It wasn't funny damn it, and… there it was. Sam pulled out his backup flask and returned to Baby. She looked highly dubious when he held this one out. "It's just water," he explained, and she reluctantly accepted it. "Drink it. Please."

Baby sighed and gazed at him mournfully for a moment, but then she said, "Okay, Sam," and put the flask to her lips.

He watched carefully as she tilted it back and swallowed a good mouthful. She choked briefly. For a moment, Sam thought, "Aha!" but there was no smoke, no shrieking and no sudden appearance of solid-black eyeballs. Baby just sat there and spluttered as the water, apparently, went down the wrong pipe. Before he quite knew what had happened, Sam was patting her on the back and admonishing her to breathe. She smiled gratefully up at him once she'd regained her equilibrium, looking utterly adorable with her hair in her eyes again. Did demons do adorable? Didn't matter. It didn't matter. He had to be thorough. Determined to carry through with every possible check he could, Sam sat down in front of her again and began to recite a string of exorcisms. Figuring time was of the essence, he started with the short ones.

"Crux sancta sit mihi lux. Non draco sit mihi dux," Sam intoned. "Vade retro Satana. Numquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas." Baby yawned when he was done, but nothing else happened. He tried again with a longer, more intense rite. "Regna terrae, cantate Deo, psallite Domino qui fertis super caelum caeli ad orientem, ecce dabit voci suae vocem virtutis, tribuite virtutem Deo. Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio,infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica." And on it went. Baby yawned several more times, and once, to Sam's chagrin, she corrected his Latin when his tongue tripped over a string of syllables. Aside from that, and Dean's continued snoring in the background, absolutely nothing else happened. Still, Sam was not finished. Leaving Baby sitting in the chair and watching him with wide, curious eyes, Sam pulled one of the cheap bedspreads off of Dean and spread it on the floor in front of the bathroom door. Then, grabbing one of the small cans of spray paint that they routinely carried in their go-bags for emergency sigils and the like, Sam began to inscribe a devil's trap on the blanket.

"Is that a Key of Solomon?" Baby asked, when he was nearly finished.

"Variation on a theme," Sam replied as he closed up the last line. "Come here." Baby got up and walked over to his side, only stumbling a bit as one of the legs of sweat pants partially unrolled. "Stand there, please," Sam said, pointing to the center of the devil's trap." He expected her to balk, was ready for it in fact, but she stepped calmly onto the blanket and then stood looking at him expectantly. Sam was on the verge asking her to step out of the trap, when a groan from behind them sent her running across the room. Well, he could check devil's traps off the list. Clearly, they weren't a problem for her.

"What are you two doing?" Dean croaked, levering himself up on one arm.

"Dean!" Baby exclaimed as she launched herself at the oldest Winchester. She landed on the bed with enough force to send the mattress bouncing and knocked him flat on his back.

Dean let out an, "oof," as he tumbled back into the pillows. Baby leaned over him on her hands and knees, peering anxiously into his face.

"Are you okay, Dean? Do you feel better now?"

"I'm good," he assured her. Then, blinking his vision back into focus, he took in the change in her appearance. "Nice clothes, sweetheart. I'm a Led Zep fan myself. Got a shirt just like that, but I think we're going to have to find you something that fits a little better."

She laughed, her eyes lighting up. "It's your shirt, Dean!"

Her eyes really were sparkling, he thought. Then, abruptly, he realized why her eyes were so bright, and it wasn't just the reflection of the morning light seeping past the edges of the motel room curtains. "Sam!" Dean barked, sitting up so fast that Baby had to scurry back onto her bottom to avoid being bowled over. The Sasquatch materialized at his side so rapidly that Dean would have suspected teleportation if all of Sam's freaky psychic powers hadn't died along with Azazel in that cemetery in Wyoming.

"What is it, Dean? What's wrong? Are you hurting?"

Dean jerked back slightly in the face of his brother's minor overreaction to his summons. "You need to chill out, Sammy," he said resignedly, then, growling, he added, "and you need to tell me what the heck you did while I was out to make Baby cry!"  
"What?" his brother asked, seemingly taken aback by Dean's anger.

"She's been crying, Sam. It's not exactly subtle. What'd you do?"

"Me! I didn't – I wouldn't – What do you think I…" Sam stammered, transforming instantly from paranoid and overprotective younger brother to geeky and incoherent younger brother. Dean grinned. He couldn't help it. This was the Sammy he loved the most, the one he'd willingly sold his own soul for. This was the kid he'd die to protect. The grin disappeared off Dean's face, however, when Sam announced, "You're the one who made her cry anyway!"

"I did not!" he protested. They glared at each other

"I was crying?" Baby asked, looking back and forth between them. She reached up a tentative hand and tapped at the rapidly drying tear tracks on her face. "Oh. I was."

"Are you okay?" Dean asked as she stared in bemusement at her now damp fingertips. He reached out and brushed the remainder of the tears from her face. Her eyes were still sparkling, but no longer with tears.

Baby nodded. "Yes. I'm fine. You just scared me."

"Me?!" Dean squeaked. He'd scared her? He hadn't meant to –

"When you fainted," she explained.

"I did _not_ faint," Dean exclaimed, outraged. "I never faint. I might get _knocked_ out or _black_ out or _pass_ out but I do _not_ faint!" Baby's subsequent giggle was not a reassuring response. Nor was Sam's blatant smirk. "Stick it, Sam!" The smirk turned into an open laugh, and Dean glowered at both of them impartially. "Soooo," Dean drawled, have we confirmed who our little lady is yet?"

"I'm Baby," she insisted.

"She's not a demon," his brother replied at the same time.

"But is she the _Impala_? That's the only thing I want to know at this point, Sam." Dean rubbed irritably at the bandage on his neck as he got off the bed and began to pace. "Is my Impala a chick? Well? Is it? Is my _home_ now a chick?!"

"I, uh, I don't know."

"But she's not a demon?"

Sam and Baby shook their heads in unison.

"Then what the heck is she?"

"I told you," Baby insisted, slapping the flat of her hands down on the tops of her thighs as she knelt on the bed. She sounded angry. No, angry was too strong a word for an emotion that adorable looking. Piqued. She sounded and looked piqued. Or maybe miffed. And if she was anything at all like every other woman Dean had ever known, he wasn't about to point out the miffed thing. Women reacted badly to the word miffed. He couldn't imagine why. Narrowing his eyes, Dean considered and disregarded means of proving who and what she was. It wasn't like she had a VIN number he could check. Though come to think of it…

"What's the torque on my girl's 327 4-barrel?" he demanded.

Baby's eyes widened for just an instant, then, without hesitating, she answered. "355 at 3200 rpm."

"Horsepower?"

"275 at 4800 rpm." She grinned, clearly proud of herself.

Sam shot Dean a startled look, but Dean just shook his head and waved his hands in a hold on gesture. "Anyone could know that," he insisted, meeting Sam's incredulous gaze. "They could. Anyone could know that," he repeated as he turned back to face Baby. He tried a different tack. "What was the mileage on the odometer when we pulled into the motel parking lot?"

Baby laughed. "Too easy. It was 16,427 miles."

"Is that right," Sam whispered sotto voce, coming over and standing beside Dean.

"I have no idea," Dean whispered back, temporarily stumped.

"It seems kind of low, don't you think?"

"Yeah, well, the odometer just rolled over a couple months back."

"Oh," Sam said.

"Give me a harder one," Baby demanded, climbing off the bed and standing in front of them. "Ask me anything."

Dean thought hard for a moment, thought about the last rebuild he'd done on the Impala's engine, and said, "What's the firing sequence?"

Baby bounced on the balls of her feet, nearly tripping in place as the cuffs on both legs of the sweat pants drooped down to her toes. "1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2!"

Holy crap. Dean looked at Sam out of the corner of his eyes and saw that, typically, the information meant absolutely nothing to his little brother.

"Is that right?" Sam demanded. "Is it?"

Turning his back on Baby, Dean placed a hand on his kid brother's shoulder and squeezed. Then, pursing his lips and widening his eyes, he said, "Congratulations, Sammy. It's a car."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

An hour later, they were no closer to understanding how or why Baby hadf gone from car to human, and though she really wanted to be, Baby was absolutely no help. She kept getting distracted by commonplace things, like the way the crappy-ass motel room carpet felt between her toes and the length of Dean's eyelashes. Sam kept getting distracted by even more ridiculous things like checking the bandage on Dean's neck every five minutes and nagging him to sit back down every time he stood for more than thirty seconds. If he didn't knock it off soon, Dean was going to have to clobber him. Frustrated, Dean sat on the bed, leaning back against the wall and watched as Sam interrogated Baby about her memories of being "born" for the umpteenth time. It always boiled down to the same thing. One second she was a car. The next second she was a girl. A very cold, very naked girl. No big revelations there. As Dean watched them, he was nagged once more by that eerie sense of familiarity that Baby engendered. Okay, she was his car. He was familiar with his car. But he'd never seen his car looking like _this_ before, and he just could shake the feeling he'd seen her somewhere bef –

"Son of bitch!" Dean ejaculated as he sprang to his feet.

"What? What's wrong?" Sam demanded, jumping to his own feet. Baby just widened her eyes, looking back and forth between them like they were a particularly fascinating episode of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

"I know who she is!"

"What? I thought you said she was the car. Isn't she the Impala?" Sam asked, clearly alarmed.

"Yes. No. I mean, yes she's the car, but I know who else she is too. I remember."

"Dean, what are you talking about?"

"Baby," Dean explained. "I've seen her before. At least, I've seen someone who looks like her before."

"Who?" Baby asked.

"That chick," Dean said, looking at her now and taking a couple steps toward her. "Last year, that chick at Lloyd's Bar, when we saved Evan Hudson from the hellhounds."

"What?!" Sam exclaimed.

"You mean the crossroad demon who offered to bring John back?" Baby said at the same time.

"How do you know about that?" Sam demanded, turning on her in anger.

"I was there. She was a bitch," Baby snapped. "I look like her, like a demon?" She didn't sound or look happy about it.

"Yeah, you do. Just like her."

"Dean, this is crazy," Sam insisted, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him further away from Baby. "You think she's your car, but she looks like a demon. She looks like a demon, but you don't think she is a demon. How does any of that make sense?"

"I don't know."

"If she's dangerous… " Sam began.

"She's not a demon, Sammy. You've done a hundred different tests. She's not a demon. She just looks like a demon for some reason."

"You don't think it's strange that your car just happens to look like an actual demon that you actually met who tried to buy your soul?"  
"Of course it's strange! It's freakin' bizarre, but what in our lives isn't?"

"He has a point," Baby offered.

"You stay out of this," Sam growled.

"See, she agrees with me," Dean said, smirking at his brother in a way that he knew would drive the kid batty. But Sam was driving him batty at the moment, so it was only fair.

"Actually, I was agreeing with Sam."

"What?" they said in unison.

"Sam's right," she said, giving Dean an apologetic look. "It can't just be a coincidence that I look like her. We should check it out. At least we could make sure that she's still demon free."

"You mean like a hunt?' Dean said, startled.

"It is what we do."  
"We?" Sam replied, sounding equally startled.

"Yeah… are you guys okay? You both look kind of confused." She looked worriedly from one of them to the other, chewing on her lower lip the whole time. "Maybe Dean should go back to bed."

"I'm fine," he grumbled. "If you two would stop cosseting me for five minutes – "

Sam ignored him, walking over to the nightstand and picking up Dad's journal. Dean had been reading through it last night before bed, and it was still lying open to the page about hoodoo and goofer dust. He knew he wasn't getting out of his crossroads deal. He wasn't even going to try, but Sam was bound to interfere and Dean wanted to find something to protect him in case the hellhounds got pissed off or just decided to go for a collateral target. He'd been seriously contemplating staining all of Sam's clothes with goofer dust, sewing it into the seams, sprinkling it in the pockets and gluing it to the insides of his shoes when he'd finally fallen asleep. "What are you doing?"

"Her name was Yadel, Aaminah Yadel. I remember writing her address in my journal after we took her home."

"So why don't you check your journal?"

"Because my laptop is in the car," Sam growled. "And I'm guessing that she wouldn't react very well to my trying to open the trunk right now." Dean grimaced at the image this invoked and darted a look at Baby. She was chewing her bottom lip again, clearly distressed. "I'm hoping you wrote it in the contact section of dad's journal." Sam flipped to the back of the book and rifled through the old receipts and odd slips of binder paper tucked in there. "And here it is." He held up a Post-It with Dean's handwriting scrawled on it. "Meena Yadel. Misspelled," he noted, giving Dean a dry look. "501 Payton, Ave. Greenwood, Mississippi. Let's go check it out."

"Whoa, whoa! Hold up for a minute there, Sammy. We're not leaving."

"Why not?"

"Why not?" Dean repeated, surprised despite previous experience that Sam wasn't seeing the obvious here. "You think I'm leaving before we're one hundred percent sure that the Impala isn't sitting in some chop shop or used car lot around here? Are you nuts?"

Sam rolled his head back and huffed out a breath as he glared at the ceiling. Then his eyes locked back on Dean's face. "I thought we'd established that she was the car."

"Maybe she is. Maybe she isn't. But I'm not setting one foot out of this crappy-ass town until I know for certain that my girl isn't here."

"But I – " Baby started, but then broke off when Sam began speaking.

"Dean, would you forget about the Impala for a minute and just – "

"No.

"Man, look, we need to – "

"No."

"Gah!" Sam howled, practically dancing in place. "This is so typical. We're in trouble and you're more worried about that damn car than about yourself. We need to get this dealt with and get rid of her so we can focus on getting you out of your deal."

"We are not looking for a way out of the deal, Sammy," Dean said, raising his voice to emphasize his point. "We are looking for my car. Now get on your computer and hack into the traffic cams so we can check and see if – "

"My laptop is in the car!" Sam shouted.

"Enough!" Baby yelled, and they both jumped. Turning, Dean saw that she had her hands over her ears and her eyes squeezed tightly shut. "How John put up with this for so long is beyond me!" Sam and Dean exchanged a baffled look. What was her problem? Walking over to Sam, Baby took the paper out of his hand and then shoved it at Dean. "Here. Call her. We don't actually have to go to Mississippi for you to at least check and make sure she's there." Then, turning back to Sam, she put her hands on her hips and fixed him with an icy stare. "I am not a _damn_ car. I am a classic car, and Dean loves me. He's not going to stop worrying until he's sure that I'm safe, so just check the traffic cameras so he can relax."

"But my laptop – "

"Wasn't in me when I changed. Dean took it out, so it must be in here somewhere."

"He did? You did?" Sam asked, turning to his brother.

"Uh…" Oops.

"Dean, were you looking at porn on my laptop again?"

Dean flashed him a sheepish smile. "Is this a trick question?"


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

When Sam said nothing, merely continuing to glare at him, Dean swallowed nervously and pointed at his bed. "It's umm… it's under there."

Shaking his head, his jaw clenching and unclenching, Sam stomped over and yanked his laptop out from the crawlspace under the queen bed. Then, still scowling at Dean, Sam went over and sat at the table. Dean assumed he was going to try hacking into the traffic camera recordings, as requested, and left him to it. Aside from a periodic loud sigh/growl, not remotely subtle as an expression of annoyance in Dean's opinion, Sammy ignored him after that. Exchanging a chagrined look with Baby, Dean told her he'd be right back and then headed for the bathroom. Once the call of nature had been dealt with – God knew Sammy had been forcing enough liquids down his throat the last few days – Dean went back into the main room to find that neither Baby nor Sam had moved. They looked like a couple ofwax dummies… and Sam was still grumping. Terrific.

Dean pulled out his cell phone and sat down on the edge of the bed. He started to dial Minah's number, thought better of it, and got back up to exchange his real cell for one of the burn phones they kept on hand. This time, when he sat down, Baby sat beside him. Not just beside him, but right up against him, and Dean gave her a startled look. She just gazed back at him calmly, her dark eyes filled with concern and something that looked suspiciously close to adoration. Dean squirmed and shifted a few inches further along the bed until their thighs were no longer touching. Baby didn't move, but she continued to watch him anxiously as he dialed the phone.

It picked up on the fourth ring. "Hello. Yadel residence." It was a man's voice, deep and with the slightest hint of a foreign accent.

"Uh, hi," Dean said, somewhat taken aback by having someone other than the person he was trying to reach answering the phone. "Is Minah there?"  
"Just a moment, please," the man said. Then Dean heard him sit the phone down. He expected it to be immediately followed by the sound of someone yelling "Minah!" but apparently the Yadel family was more civilized than most of the people he was used to dealing with. After about twenty seconds of silence, he heard the receiver on the other end of the line moving and then a new person spoke.

"Hello," she said. Dean gulped. It was her. There was no mistaking the timber of that voice, not now that he'd finally placed it, not with the encounter with the crossroad demon so fresh in his memory. "Hello," she said again. "Who's calling?" The intonations in her voice were totally different than Baby's. For that matter they were totally different than the demon's had been, but it made _no_ difference to Dean's gut which roiled and rolled with every syllable she spoke.

"Sorry," he said in a rush. "Wrong number." Then he snapped the phone shut, his breath heaving in his chest as he fought not to hyperventilate.

Baby put a hand on his knee. "Are you okay? Was it her?"

Dean looked up from the phone clutched in his hands and saw that Sam was also watching him, waiting for his answer. "Yeah, far as I can tell, it was her."

Sam frowned thoughtfully. "No way to be certain over the phone, unless… did you try saying Christo?" he asked, raising his eyebrows in sudden curiosity.

"No, I didn't say Christo!" Dean snapped. "You want me to call her back and recite a damn exorcism? I'm sure she'd be thrilled to stay on the line while some strange guy chants at her in Latin."

Sam rolled his eyes. "We'll have to swing by and check on her. We have to be sure."

"Oh yeah. Swing by Mississippi. Sure," he drawled. "That's just right next door."

"We've driven farther for less, Dean."

"Whatever, man. Just find those recordings."

"I'm working on it."

"Well, work faster!" Sam huffed again, but his fingers on the keyboard did seem to start moving faster. Dean gave Baby's hand on his leg a reassuring pat and then got up from the bed and pulled on his socks, boots and coat. He dug around in his go-bag until he found his wallet and then headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Sam asked, looking up with a suspicious frown.

"The vending machine. I'm hungry."

Sam's frown deepened. "We'll go out for breakfast later."

"I'm hungry now."

"It won't kill you."

"Neither will going to the vending machine," Dean snapped.

"Actually, considering the nutritional content of Funyuns and Doritos, it just might," Sam bellyached. "Not to mention the fact that it's -50 degrees outside, and you just collapsed from blood loss."

"Which is why I need food!" Dean bit out.

"Wait," Sam insisted. Dean opened his mouth for heated reply, but Sam's expression flowed rapidly from disapproving to dismayed and worried, and Dean felt his resolve melting. Sam had perfected that pathetic look at the age of three, and Dean had never grown a skin thick enough to repel it. Rolling his eyes, Dean kicked off his shoes and flapped his hands at Sam in a "you win" gesture.

"Thanks," Sam said, smiling at him gratefully.

"Whatever." Dean flopped back down onto the bed. Baby immediately cuddled back up against him. He'd never had a dog growing up, but Dean was starting to wonder if that was what this was like, a big, soft warm body that snuggled up to you every time you sat still for five seconds and made contented rumbling noises. What did you call it when a dog did that? Dogs didn't purr, after all. Cats purred. Women purred. Hell, even cars purred. Just not dogs. Well, rumbling, purring or whatever, Dean was pretty certain Baby smelled better than a dog would.

Dean was bored out his mind and down to trying to find hidden pictures in the stains on the ceiling an hour later. He could have watched TV, but that would have involved getting up to turn the TV on, and there was a large, warm weight asleep on his arm. Dean vaguely remembered some story from school about a Chinese emperor who'd cut off his sleeve to avoid waking a sleeping kitten – not that he'd read the story or anything, the teacher had shown a video of it in class – but Dean wasn't about to cut off the sleeve of his dad's leather jacket. So that left him stuck. Bored and stuck.

"What's taking so long?" he demanded in a whisper when Sam passed by on his way to the bathroom. "You find the footage yet?"

Sam rolled his eyes, but Dean noticed that he whispered too when he answered. "Yeah, but it's not like traffic cam videos come in .avi or standard .mpg. I have to convert them and that's taking a while. Just be patient."

"You're in full-on geek heaven mode, aren't you?" Dean hissed.

"No, I'm in full-on freaked out mode because there's a girl claiming to be our car. Give me a break."

"My car," Dean corrected automatically.

"Whatever, man," Sam said as he walked away.

Finally, just when he'd discovered that one of the stains looked like a wendigo if he closed his left eye and squinted with his right, Sam found something. Dean knew this because his brother let out a single, heartfelt, "Crap!" Baby sat partially up, bleary-eyed, and Dean shifted out from under her to go look at what Sam had found.

"What? What'd you find?"

"Mostly a lot of nothing," Sam said, running a hand through his floppy hair in frustration. "I've checked the feed on every traffic cam in every direction for a ten block radius. The Impala hasn't passed through a single intersection that I can see." Sam had Quicktime open and was flipping between files faster than Dean could follow. "There's nothing anywhere. So, on a hunch I checked to see if the security cam on that independent ATM across the street broadcasts. It does, and it's actually in range of the hotel parking lot. The resolution is crappy, and it pixilates like crazy when I zoom in, but…" Sam brought up a new video file. Dean could see the sidewalk across the street, the street itself, the hotel parking lot and, in the bottom right corner of the screen, a blurry image of the Impala. Sam fastforwarded through time. Then, just after he hit play, Dean watched in amazement as the car simply vanished and in its place appeared a naked girl, standing utterly still. A moment later, her hair began to move in the wind and Dean felt the hairs on his arm standing on end.

"Holy crap."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "My sentiments, exactly."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

"Okay," Sam said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Okay, so that pretty much establishes it. The Impala's gone, so there's no point sticking around here looking for it."

"But I'm right – " Baby began, sounding indignant.

"The car. The car is gone," he corrected himself hurriedly, giving Dean a tight smile. "Searching chop shops and impound lots isn't going to do us any good, so we might as well get out of this freaky-ass town and head to Sioux Falls. We can swing by Greenwood and check up on that Minah girl, then hook up with Bobby afterward. Maybe he can figure out what happened."

"Hey, normally I'm all for the 'Let's ask Bobby. He can figure out anything!' solution to impossible situations," Dean said, "but don't you think this might be just a little bit out of his league?" He moved both his hands in that synchronized wavy motion that men everywhere used to denote an attractive female form.

"You got any better ideas?" Sam asked. "Because me, I'm fresh out."

Dean pursed his lips and shrugged. "Nope. Not a one."

"Then we're heading to Bobby's by way of Greenwood."

"Do I get a vote in this?" Baby demanded. They both turned to look at her. She had her hands on her hips and a decidedly pouty look on her face. Sam blinked. For someone who'd only just become human, she was certainly mastering the art of female manipulation quickly enough. Dean was already melting in a puddle of moldable goo beside him.

"Of course you get a – " Dean began.

"No, absolutely not," Sam cut him off. "If you are what you claim you are, then you don't really have a clue about operating as a human in this world, so you need to let us make the decisions. If you aren't what you claim to be, then we can't trust you and you definitely don't have a say in any decision we make. Either way, you don't get a vote."

"Sam!" Dean hissed, reaching out and whacking him on the shoulder. "Be nice, damn it."

"I am being nice," Sam said, rolling his eyes. "I'm not shooting her."

"I appreciate that," Baby chimed in, causing both of them turn and look at her in surprise. "The not shooting me thing. I'm pretty sure it would hurt, and I'd really rather not die before you figure out how to turn me back into a car. If I was dead, changing me back probably wouldn't work anymore. Or worse, it might make me turn back into a car that didn't run, and that would suck. I don't want to wind up like some old junker on the side of the highway, rotting on my rims with weeds growing up through my floorboards." She shuddered. "I'd rather be sold off for parts, or melted down or salted and burned. I can't stand the idea of sitting around, half-dead, rotting away, forgotten."

Not quite sure what to make of this monologue, Sam glanced at his brother. Dean was staring at Baby with wide, appalled eyes, no doubt picturing the scene she'd so vividly described. Great, one car-obsessed maniac in the family was enough. Two might just drive Sam right over the edge. "Okay," he said. "We'll keep that in mind if the issue should ever come up. Meanwhile, you do what we tell you to do. Got it?"

Baby smiled, the expression she turned on them both sweet and trusting. "Got it," she agreed.

Dean smiled back at her reassuringly then fixed his brother with a glare that could have drawn blood from someone slightly more thin-skinned than Sam was. Sam just rolled his eyes again, and pulled out his cellphone. "What are you doing?" Dean asked.

"Calling Bobby. Maybe he can come pick us up."

"Dude, Bobby is not going to drive all the way from South Dakota just to come pick us up. That's ridiculous."

"Maybe, but I can at least give him a heads up on the situation. He can get started on the research while he waits for us to get there." Dean shrugged, and Sam listened as Bobby's voicemail picked up. "This is Bobby Singer. Gone hunting. If it's important leave a message. If it's not, get the hell off my line and go away." The command was followed by a beep, and Sam dutifully left a message, one that should have the older hunter's eyes bugging out in due course. "Hey Bobby, it's Sam. Uh, listen, the Impala has turned into a girl. A real one. We think. So, any thoughts? We'll be heading your way soon. Bye." Sam hung up. He only wished he could see Bobby's face when he heard that message.

Dean was laughing, clearly amused by Sam's cryptic message, Baby watching him with a puzzled expression. "Okay, so now we just have to get there and hope that Bobby's head doesn't explode from sheer curiosity in the mean time. So, you wait here with our little darling and I'll go jack us a car."

"What? Dean, no. We are not stealing a car."

"Sammy, come on. If there was ever a time to steal a car, this is it."

"No. It's not."

"Well how else are we going to get to Sioux Falls?"

"We could always take the bus," Sam suggested tentatively.

"Have you lost your mind, college boy? The bus! I wouldn't be caught dead on a bus," Dean spat out. "I wouldn't be caught undead and zombified on a bus! I'd walk to South Dakota first."

"There's nothing wrong with taking the bus, Dean. Lots of people take the bus," Sam sighed.

"Yeah, lots of super uncool people who have no choice. We have a choice. I'm stealing a car."

"I'm telling you that's not a good idea."

"Why not?" Dean demanded. "It's not like we haven't done it before when we were in a bind. You stole one to save me from that scarecrow."

"That was different."

"Different how?"

"Different in the sense that I didn't have a young girl with me who has no first name, no last name, no I.D., no identity to speak of and possibly shares the same finger prints as another living human being. How, exactly, would we explain all of that if we had the bad luck to get pulled over? We can't even prove that she's of age."

"So she'd lie. This is not exactly new territory for us."

"Yeah, well, it is for her."

"She's a quick learner."

"And you're basing this on what, precisely?"

"How about the fact that she's been alive for less than a day and she's already talking and walking? Clearly, she's a quick study. I'm sure lying will be no problem."

Sam turned to the girl. "Baby, how old are you?"

"Forty-one. Or, do you mean as a human, because then I think I'm zero."

"See?" Sam snapped, fixing Dean with an 'I told you so' look.

His brother just glared at him. "Sweetheart, if anyone asks, you're twenty. Okay?"

"But I'm not twenty," Baby said, clearly puzzled by the contradiction. "I'm either forty-one or zero."

Dean ran his hands over his face, then shook a finger in Sam's direction. "Don't say it. Just don't say it."

His brother was still looking pale and drawn, so Sam tried not to sound too smug as he said, "I wasn't going to, but you see why stealing a car is a bad idea right now?"

"Yeah, I get it. I think you're freakin' paranoid, but I get it. So now what, genius?"

"Now we buy a car since the bus is obviously unacceptable, and I'm assuming that you feel the same way about the train."

"Hey," Dean corrected, "trains can be cool, they're just kind of hard to get off of stealthily if something goes wrong."

"True enough," Sam agreed. "So, that leaves us with buying a car, and that means we need more money."

Dean grinned maniacally. "So, who's hustling and who's Baby-sitting?"


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

"Whoa, whoa! Hustling? No way, Dean."

"Sam, in case it's slipped your mind, hustling is what we do."

"Hunting is what we do, Dean. You've been telling me that for more than two years. Hell, my whole life. We are hunters."

"Yeah, well, hustling is how we pay for it."

Sam shook his head. "But not alone. It's not the hustling drunk bikers with more money than sense that I object to. It's hustling alone. It's too dangerous."

Dean threw his head back with an exasperated sigh. "Sammy, come on. I hustled alone for years, when you were at Stanford, and I was hunting by myself. Hell, before that even, whenever we ran low on cash and Dad was gone. I think I can handle it."

"Oh yeah, and how many times did you get beat up, Dean?" Sam demanded, trying hard not to think about all those times that his brother had gone out on his own when he was barely more than a kid. Sometimes he thought their father had a lot to answer for, demons and monsters be damned. "How often did you get your ass kicked and your stake money stolen because the other guy was a sore loser? Huh? Tell me that."

Dean shifted uncomfortably. "Not that often."

"Too often. We're not kids anymore and you're not alone, and you are _not_ going out hustling by yourself."

Shoving the heels of his palms against his forehead, Dean began walking in agitated circles while Baby watched with wide eyes. Abruptly he stopped and whirled on Sam, his pointer finger extended accusingly. "You – you – you! You have turned into a completely wacko overprotective girl!"

"Dean… "

"We can't leave Baby alone while we go hustle pool, Sam," Dean yelled, "and we sure as hell can't take her with us. Look at her!"

Sam looked. Baby gazed back at him in earnest inquiry. His and Dean's clothing was hanging on her like… well, like a guy's clothes on a much smaller girl. She looked like an unusually clean homeless waif, or maybe some downtrodden housewife who'd married way, way too young and was expected to stay home and pop out a new baby every year. She looked neglected, possibly abused, definitely maltreated, totally innocent and utterly sexy. None of those looks went real well with pool hall or biker bar. Crap. But it didn't matter. They were _not _splitting up.

"She'll need decent clothes first," Sam said, "but then she's coming with us. I'll go pick up – no, _you'll_ go pick up something for Baby while I wait here with her. There's a K-Mart like six blocks down the road. Even you can't get in trouble in six blocks." Please God, he added silently to himself.

"I thought you wanted me to stay out of the cold cause I'm all weak and wounded and such."

"I do," Sam said through gritted teeth. "But we can't stay here and you have to be the one to go. Just make it fast. Once she has some decent clothes, then we can all go out together to get enough money for a car."

"Fine. Okay by me. Heck, with that cute little smile, not to mention her cute little – "

"Dean!" Sam all but bellowed.

" – tush, she'll probably distract the hell out of the marks anyway, make our job easier."

Sam spluttered. "Damn it, Dean, we can't use her like that."

"I'd love to help," Baby interjected, putting on hand comfortingly on Sam's arm. She grinned up at him eagerly. "Really, Sam. I want to. I've never gotten to watch you hustle pool before, just heard about it. This will be fun."

"See, she'd love to help," Dean said smugly. "Besides, since when are you Mr. Over-Protective? You're still half-convinced she's some kind of demon." Baby's face fell as Dean spoke, and Sam found himself with the surprising though not unfamiliar urge to kick his brother.

"I am not," Sam hissed back before turning a sheepish smile on Baby and shaking his head. "Really, I'm not. I just – "

"Don't want to leave me alone with her," Dean supplied less than helpfully.

"Shut up, Dean!" If the girl started crying again, Sam was going to strangle his brother, which would kind of defeat the purpose of saving him from whatever danger Baby represented, not to mention his upcoming trip to… the basement.

"Then why don't you want to leave us alone together?" Dean asked, eyeballing Sam knowingly.

"Just go, Dean. You're wasting time."

"I don't have enough cash to cover girl clothes."

"Use your cash for a cab. There should be enough left on your cards for clothes. We can use what's left of my cash for the stake for pool."

"It's only a couple of blocks, Sammy. I'm taking a cab for just – "

"Take the damn cab, Dean!"

"Yes, sir, college boy." Dean braced to attention but stopped short of a mock salute. Their father had never approved of those, and had let Dean feel the sharp side of his tongue the few times Dean had jokingly saluted the former Marine. Sam scowled. Dad hadn't approved of a lot of things. So many pointless rules, so many impossible expectations. He'd twisted Dean into knots, and Dean was the only one who couldn't see it. Luckily, Dean also didn't seem to see Sam's scowl as he pulled his shoes on preparatory to going out. Once he was all laced up, Dean grabbed one of the little note pads they used when pretending to be feds out of his go-bag.

"Come here for a second, honey." Baby walked quickly to Dean's side, overly eager to please his brother as far as Sam could tell. Dean turned her to face him squarely, made sure she was standing up straight and had her extend her arms out to the sides. Then, placing his hands over her hips, he ran his cupped palms up and down her body, skimming just over the surface without actually touching her, an introspective look on his face.

"Dude, _what_ are you doing?" Sam demanded, utterly appalled as Dean's hands hovered over her breasts, rotating in a circular motion.

"Figuring out sizes," he replied matter-of-factly. "It's not like she's going to know her measurements, and I wouldn't know how to use a measuring tape even if we had one."

"You can tell her bra size by groping her?" Sam retorted irately.

"Listen, princess," Dean snapped, making Baby giggle, "any self-respecting American male can tell a pretty girl's cup size by using his hands. And, may I remind you, I am not actually touching her so there's no groping involved. You're just ignorant and dirty-minded."

Sam glared at his brother, making Baby laugh all the harder. "You can touch me anywhere you need to, Dean," she said, grinning brightly. "I don't mind."

To Sam's intense amusement, this pronouncement caused Dean's pale skin to turn a nice, vibrant red. His brother hastily dropped his hands, actually taking a nervous step back. "Uh, no. No, that's okay. Thanks anyway." He cleared his throat, then stared down at Baby's sock-clad feet. "Shoes." He looked up at Sam, a helpless and still mildly alarmed look on his face. "Sammy, I have absolutely no idea how to measure feet. They're not my area."

Taking pity on his brother's dismay, Sam grabbed a newspaper off the bathroom counter and walked over to join them. "Give me your pen," he said as he kneeled down in front of Baby.

"What are you going to do?" Dean asked, clearly puzzled by the purpose of the newspaper.

"Back before equal rights, black people weren't allowed to try on clothing in stores. That included shoes. Stand here, Baby," Sam instructed, pointing to the spread out newspaper. Once she was in place, he took the pen and began to outline the shape of her feet. "So when black children needed new shoes, their parents would trace an outline of their feet on a piece of paper, usually newspaper because it was cheap, and then take that with them to the store."

"Huh. But don't you mean African-American children, college boy?" Dean snarked.

"Nope. Not all black people are African-American as one of my dormmates was quick to point out. Joseph was from Fiji and he absolutely hated being called an African-American, so I stick with black."

"Always bet on black, baby," Dean said in his best Wesley Snipes giving his own Baby a wink. Sam rolled his eyes.

An hour later, Dean was gone, Sam was pacing and deeply regretting his decision to let his injured brother go out alone, and Baby was stretched out on her stomach on Dean's bed and watching their hotel room's crappy television with a curious tilt to her head and her feet swinging back and forth in the air, ankles crossed. Periodically she'd ask him a question, some extremely perceptive and insightful, others so naïve that Sam found himself more certain than ever that she'd literally been born just hours before. It was after one such incident that he found himself, unexpectedly, asking questions of her.

"Umm, Baby?"

"Hmmm?"

"You said you've heard us talk about hustling?" She nodded without looking away from the television. "Did you ever hear my dad talk about hustling pool… talk about Dean hustling pool?"

Baby looked over at him, concern writ large on her face. "What wrong, Sam? Your voice sounds all tight."

Sam cleared his throat self-consciously. "Do remember how old Dean was the first time you heard him or Dad talking about it?"

Baby frowned and closed her eyes. Sam could practically see the wheels spinning in her mind as she tried to remember, and he couldn't help but picture the Impala's shiny silver rims, though the engine might have been a more apt metaphor. "Dean was… I think he was about twelve years old."

"Twelve!" Sam exclaimed. "You must be wrong. There's no way Dean could have hustled that young."

"No, I think he did. I remember John came back from hunting a trio of ghosts in Saratoga and when he got back to the motel, you were there alone. I know because he muttered about it the whole time he was driving around and looking for Dean, about how irresponsible it was for him to leave you alone when you were so little. Then he found him walking down the side of the road, and when they got back in me, Dean was bleeding and crying and John was cursing a blue streak. Dean said something about some asshole not paying up on his bets, and John said he was too young to be hustling pool alone. Dean said something about groceries and taking care of you and then John got real quiet. That's all I know."

It wasn't, however, all that Sam knew. He remembered that. God, he remembered Dad being gone longer than expected and them running out of food and money. Sam had lost his only pair of sneakers to the local bully, and Dean had bought him a new pair, a _brand new_ pair. Thinking back on it, Sam knew that his brother shouldn't have been able to afford those. He had to have used the last of their food money for the shoes, and when they actually ran out of food… Dean took care of it. Dean always took care of everything. He'd been quiet for days after that, not hugging or wrestling with Sam, favoring what, Sam now realized, must have been cracked ribs. What kind of bastard would break a kid's ribs, Sam wondered furiously. He was overcome by the urge to try and find the guy now, fifteen years later, and show him how it felt to be a human punching bag. But for all the anger he felt toward the unknown stranger, it was nothing compared to what he felt when he thought of his father putting Dean in that position in the first place. Was it any wonder that Dean had sold his soul to Hell to save Sam's life when he'd already been living in Hell for years to _give_ Sam a life?

Sam swallowed hard, trying not to let Baby see just how upset he was. Hurry up, Dean, he thought silently. Hurry up and get back here where I can keep an eye on you for a change.


End file.
